The Tale of Castle Cottage

by Susan Wittig Albert

  In the course of this, a number of things were found that had not previously been known to be lost, such as the lavender lace fichu that her ladyship had worn with her goingaway costume some fifty years before, and the polished turtle shell that her ladyship’s great uncle had brought home from the Galapagos Islands, where he had voyaged on the Beagle with that awful Mr. Darwin, in 1831. Oh, and also found was the silver-backed mirror that Lady Longford believed to have been stolen by the last upstairs maid but one, who had been accused of and summarily discharged for the theft. (I am very sorry to tell you that her ladyship was not discomfited by the discovery of the mirror, as you or I might have been, nor did she feel at all guilty for having falsely accused an innocent servant. In fact, she had forgotten all about the incident and was merely pleased to have the mirror back again.)

  But the attics were finished, and the third-floor servants’ rooms and the second-floor bedrooms, and no book had been found. All that was left was the main downstairs rooms, the great dining room, and the drawing room. And when all these were done and still nothing had been found, there was only the library remaining. This was the hardest room to search, of course, for there were floor-to-ceiling shelves on three walls, all of them lined with a great variety of books. Yes, books. Books of all sizes and dimensions.

  It was by now beginning to dawn upon on her ladyship that her deceased husband might not have simply mislaid his valuable book. Instead, he might have deliberately hidden it, although why he should do such an inconsiderate thing (and especially why he should not have told her about it!), she could not begin to guess.

  But if he had hidden it, what better place than his library? He might have tucked the precious book inside some larger volume, or perhaps behind a row of volumes. Which meant, of course, that Lady Longford had to see that every single one of the thousands of volumes in the library was taken off the shelves and opened in front of her, to be sure that it did not contain the book she was looking for.

  At this important juncture, a spanner was tossed into Lady Longford’s works, for Maud Bloomsdale’s mother fell ill. Old Mrs. Bloomsdale lived alone and had no one to care for her, so Maud naturally asked Lady Longford for a few days’ holiday. To which request, her ladyship quite naturally said no (which is what she always said when one of the servants asked for time off), and required Maud to choose between her employer and her mother.

  To Maud’s everlasting credit, she chose her mother and then went home to care for her, leaving Lady Longford to look for another upstairs maid. (Please don’t worry about Maud. I am pleased to tell you that, after her mother was well again, she was hired by Mrs. Kittredge at Raven Hall, which is a far better and kinder situation at a far better and more rewarding salary than she could ever have earned at Tidmarsh Manor.)

  But since Maud was now gone and her ladyship did not trust the young tweeny—a girl named Lucy—to carry out her search, she had no other choice than to ask Mrs. Beever. So the very next morning, Lady Longford summoned her cook from the kitchen and ordered her to report to the library at two every afternoon for the next three days.

  When she heard this request, Mrs. Beever felt decidedly uneasy. She was a round-faced, plump, and cheerful lady who had cooked at Tidmarsh Manor for many years and felt most at home in the kitchen.

  “An’ what’ll your ladyship be wantin’ me to do in the library?” she asked uncertainly.

  Lady Longford waved a hand at the shelves (for they were in the library whilst this discussion was going on). “We will be searching every book and each shelf. The task should take, I estimate, about four days. You will remove the books from the shelves and show them to me. Then you will dust and replace them.”

  Mrs. Beever was taken aback, and never being one to keep silent, she said what came first to her mind. “Well, mum, if ye’ll forgive me for sayin’ so, couldn’t t’ job wait until t’ new maid comes? If it’s only takin’ down and dustin’ books, I mean. If I’m dustin’ books in t’ library, I woan’t be cookin’ in t’ kitchen, for I canna be in two places at once. Supper is bound to suffer, as well as t’ next day’s dinner. An’ t’ plums are comin’ on this week. Who’ll make t’ jelly, if I’m dustin’ books?”

  “The job is important,” her ladyship said sternly. “It cannot wait.”

  “Aye, mum,” Mrs. Beever said. She paused, recalling what Maud had told her, that her ladyship was frantic to find something she had lost and was turning out the whole house in the hunt for it. “If ye’ll pardon me askin’, are we lookin’ for the same thing that you an’ Maud were lookin’ for?”

  Lady Longford drew herself up to her full height. “What we are looking for is none of your business, Mrs. Beever,” she said ferociously. “All that is required of you is to be here at two this afternoon to look for it. Is that understood?”

  And with that, Mrs. Beever had to be satisfied. But that night, after spending the entire afternoon in the library, she told her husband, “‘Tis a gert mystery, what we’re lookin’ for. She woan’t even tell me, just has me pull out book after book and open each one on the table in front of her. Mayhap she’s huntin’ for a piece of paper.”

  “A letter, mebbee?” Mr. Beever hazarded. He frowned. “Or money? Could be money.”

  “It’s crazy,” Mrs. Beever said, shaking her head. “Mayhap she doan’t even know her own self what she’s lookin’ for. Daft as a brush, the woman is.”

  “Daresay she’ll know it when she sees it,” her husband said in a comforting tone. “An so’ll you, Mrs. Beever.”

  “But what if we doan’t find whatever it is, an’ she starts accusin’ folk of takin’ it?” Mrs. Beever asked worriedly.

  “Borrowin’ trouble nivver pays,” Mr. Beever cautioned, but he looked worried, too.

  So for the next two afternoons, Lady Longford and Mrs. Beever went through all the books in the library. Mrs. Beever was required to clear an entire shelf at a time, baring the wall behind the books. Then she brought the larger books to the table where Lady Longford sat. Her ladyship would open each book in three or four places, then close it again, to be dusted and returned to the shelf.

  In this way, they went through all the volumes in the library. They found a five-pound note tucked between two pages in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, and four-leaf clovers, and a shoestring that had been used to mark someone’s place, and odd bits of writing, lists and notes and even several letters. But none of this seemed to be what her ladyship was looking for.

  They finished the job on the day that news of Mr. Adcock’s death was making its way around the village. Mr. Beever had carried the tidings to Mrs. Beever, who knew Mrs. Adcock from the parish committees they served on and was deeply saddened. Mrs. Beever took the news to Lady Longford, who only pressed her thin lips together and said, “Well, it was Adcock’s choice, wasn’t it? Nobody made him do it. I suppose he simply decided that his life wasn’t worth living.”

  Mrs. Beever had to literally bite her tongue to keep from snapping a bitter reply, and began dusting the empty bookshelf with such ferocity that the dust flew into the air, sending her ladyship into a violent sneezing fit—quite a satisfactory fit, as far as Mrs. Beever was concerned, even though she had to endure a scolding for it.

  By the end of the afternoon, the last book had been examined and replaced on the shelf. Her ladyship sat forward in her chair and folded her hands with a scowl, speaking sternly.

  “Well, now, Mrs. Beever, I have arrived at a conclusion. This entire house has been searched from top to bottom as carefully as possible, and the object for which I am searching has not been found. So I must presume that it has been stolen.” She had the grace to add, “Not that I am accusing you or Mr. Beever.” They had been with her for so long and had been so earnest and unimaginative that she could not picture them as thieves, and in this case, I must assure you that her ladyship is right. The Beevers are as honest as the day is long.

  “But there have been other servants in the house,” her ladyship added, “and you you
rself have been acquainted with each of them. In your opinion, who might have stolen it?”

  Mrs. Beever had been preparing herself for this question. “Well, I s‘pose ’tis possible,” she said unwillingly. “But I canna say more until I know what might’ve been took.”

  Lady Longford hesitated, still reluctant but feeling that it was now necessary to reveal what she was looking for. “It is a book,” she said at last, “a very old book that Lord Longford acquired a very long time ago. So now I must ask you who might have had the opportunity to steal this thing.”

  “A book!” Mrs. Beever was astonished, for she could not fathom why anybody would want to steal a book, especially an old book. She wrinkled her nose. “Well, there’ve been three or four tweenies. But what they’d want with a book, I canna guess. Anyway, they’re seldom left alone long ‘nough to make off with anythin’.”

  Mrs. Beever was right, for the tweenies (who worked both upstairs and down) were either in the kitchen with her or working with the upstairs maid. They slept upstairs and could have crept into the box room and taken the book when the rest of the household was asleep, but Mrs. Beever did not think of that.

  “Who else?” Lady Longford asked.

  “There’s been four upstairs maids over t’ past years,” Mrs. Beever said. She counted them on her fingers. “Mayhew, Brandon, Lamont, and t’ last one, Maud Bloomsdale.”

  “Brandon!” Lady Longford seized on one of the names. “Brandon. Sally Brandon. She lives at Castle Farm with her mother and father, I believe. Did I not discharge the girl for theft?”

  Mrs. Beever nodded uncomfortably. Sally Brandon was the unfortunate young person who had been accused of stealing Lady Longford’s silver-backed mirror—falsely and tragically, as it now seemed.

  “Well, there you have it!” Lady Longford exclaimed triumphantly. “Once a thief, always a thief. It was Sally Brandon who took the book! I’m sure of it!”

  “But Maud said that t’ mirror was found,” Mrs. Beever reminded her ladyship. Half under her breath, she added, “So Sally Brandon wa’n’t a thief after all.”

  No thief, she thought sadly, but without a character from Lady Longford and with rumors of thievery swirling all around her, poor Sally had not been able to get another place in the village. She had married the eldest Crawley boy, who then lost his arm in a mowing accident. The two of them had disappeared into the maw of London. Lord only knew where they were now, or what they were doing.

  “Nonsense,” Lady Longford replied crisply. If she heard the barely concealed accusation in Mrs. Beever’s tone, she ignored it. She also ignored the supreme illogic in her own reply. “Of course Sally Brandon was a thief. The fact that the mirror was discovered means nothing. She could have taken a half-dozen other items and not been found out. I am quite sure that she took the book.” Her ladyship lifted her chin. “Tell Mr. Beever I want the phaeton brought round. I shall drive at once to Castle Farm and demand that the girl return Lord Longford’s book.”

  Mrs. Beever tried not to roll her eyes. “But t’ Brandons have been gone for quite some time,” she said. “Sally got married an’ her an’ her husband went to Lunnun, an’ nobody’s heard from ’em since. Her mum’s dead. Her dad got married again and went to Canada.”

  Lady Longford’s eyes narrowed to slits, and her bosom began to heave. “You’re telling me that Sally Brandon got away with my book and I’ll never get it back?” Her voice rose shrilly in the course of this sentence, and by the time she reached the question mark at the end, she was shrieking. “Summon the constable! Fetch Captain Woodcock. I want that girl found and my book returned!”

  By this time, Mrs. Beever was deeply offended. Righteously offended, she felt, and her sense of affront on Sally’s behalf gave her courage. She drew herself up, standing like a rock, chin up, fists on hips, elbows out at right angles, the image of stalwart dignity and offended justice.

  “I am tellin’ your ladyship that Sally wa’n’t no thief,” she said staunchly. “Whatever happened to t’ book ye’re lookin’ for, Sally Brandon didn’t take it.”

  This is quite wonderful, isn’t it? So admirable of Mrs. Beever, defying Lady Longford’s terrible wrath in defense of a vulnerable young woman.

  But I am very sorry to say that Mrs. Beever—who can usually be counted upon as a very reliable judge of a servant’s character—is completely wrong about Sally Brandon. For when that slight, pretty young girl of sixteen found herself accused of theft and realized that she was about to be sacked for something she did not do, she did something she would not have otherwise done, not in a million years.

  She crept into the small, dark box room where Lord Longford’s collections had been willy-nilly dumped on the shelves and thrown on the floor and took the Revelation of John. Like Rooker, Sally didn’t care how old the book was or who had made it, and she had no interest in what was written on its pages, for she herself rarely read anything but penny-dreadfuls and lending-library romances. She couldn’t have read it, anyway, because it was written in Latin.

  What’s more, she had no idea—none at all!—that the thing had any value. She merely thought that the cover was pretty, with all that gold-colored metal and the bits of sparkling green and red and blue glass that looked like emeralds and rubies and sapphires. Of course, she knew that the metal couldn’.t really be gold, and those couldn’t really be jewels, for if they were, the book would be enormously valuable and would be locked up in the family safe, away from thieves. But it wasn’t. It was lying on a dusty shelf, along with broken butterflies and dirty old rocks. Nobody knew it was there. Nobody would know if she took it.

  So Sally, no thief at heart but accused of being one, became one.

  And the book? It went back to Castle Cottage with her, carried away in her little bundle of underwear and stockings and the apron Lady Longford required her to buy out of her meager earnings. She put it under her bed and forgot about it in all the flurry of efforts to find new work. Then she fell in love with the eldest Crawley boy and forgot about everything else in the whole wide world, which I am sure you understand from your own experience.

  And then one day her little brother Dickey looked under his sister’s bed and found the book, and he, too, thought it was pretty, with all those bits of glass stuck all over it. Dickey had chiseled out a little hidey-hole in the inner wall of the tiny corner room where he slept, where he hid his three precious marbles and the broken knife blade he’d found in the lane and the star-shaped brass decoration that had fallen off Captain Woodcock’s horse’s bridle. It was in this hidey-hole that he tucked the book for safekeeping. And then, not a week later, tragedy struck. Dickey’s mother died, and he was summarily shipped off to live with his grandmother in Carlisle. He didn’t have time to take his pretties with him.

  And now (having put two and two together again) I can hear you cry once more, with a note of triumph and great glee: “Oh, now I have it! Rooker Rat found the book that Sally Brandon stole and her little brother Dickey hid in his hidey-hole in the wall! That’s how the Revelation got into the pile of hay on the floor of barn!”

  But once again, dear reader, I must tell you that this is not what happened. And once again, I must beg you to be patient, for there are several more twists in the story of the Revelation. We will untwist them in good time.

  But in the meantime, we are going down to Hill Top Farm, where Miss Potter is also thinking about a book.

  And her book, too, is unfinished.

  17

  Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis Speak from the Heart

  I am rather disturbed at that cheque not having come—is there going to be any delay in keeping to the plan of settling the 1912 account, & beginning to pay the 1913 account in October? . . . I am not short but I am spending money on building, and I ought to cut my coat according to my cloth! When one knows there is money overdue one is tempted to spending.

  —Beatrix Potter to Harold Warne, 1913

  After Bertram left to go back to Lindeth How, Beatrix
sat very still for a very long time, turning things over in her heart. Her brother’s quixotic decision might help him feel better about his deception, for making a clean breast of things usually did improve one’s state of mind. She certainly could not blame him for wanting to do that. But his revelation would completely and utterly destroy their parents. When she arrived on Monday, things would be in a terrible state. Her mother would be hysterical, her father would be furious. However would she cope? Just the thought of it made her head hurt.

  But it wasn’t Beatrix’s way to sit around and fret. Bertram was going to do whatever he was going to do, no matter how unwise she thought it. Anyway, there were other, more immediate things she needed to attend to. The unfinished book, still just a litter of partially completed pages on the table in front of her. She had to finish it as soon as possible, or the children would not have it by Christmas. There was the letter that she ought to write to Harold Warne, inquiring about the missing royalty cheques. And the invoices for building materials that had arrived in Saturday’s post from Mr. Biddle, which she had put in a stack on top of the oak dresser against the wall. She had bills to pay, although if the royalty cheque didn’t arrive soon, there might not be enough money to cover everything.

  Characteristically, Beatrix chose to do the most unpleasant thing first. She sat down, picked up her pen, and drafted the letter to Harold Warne. The few sentences—especially the phrase “money overdue”—seemed curt, and she frowned at them. Was there a less offensive way to remind him that she was still waiting for the payment he had promised her last year? But perhaps it was better to be direct. Beating around the bush never got her anywhere with Harold, who seemed to turn a deaf ear to her concerns about reliable accounting and timely payment. She often wondered whether he treated Warne’s other authors in the same cavalier way, or if he was careless with her accounts because he considered her—his brother’s former fiancée—to be one of the family. Familiarity breeding contempt, as it were.